Over time our society has developed into a nation where consumers give little thought to the durability of products and where goods are intended to wear out so that new items can be purchased. The latest, greatest gadget has taken the place of long lasting sturdiness and waste is as common as the cold. One must have the newest phone, television, car – even textbooks are repeatedly revised and updated, resulting in useless material. While we all love new technology and it is of course, a valuable tool, consideration must be made to lengthening the use of products and services or we will eventually be overwhelmed by our own waste.
The idea of “Planned Obsolescence” brought to mind textbooks. On the one hand, educational material should be current and available to the masses, but the requirement of revised versions with minor changes that makes current data outdated promotes waste. We are taught to be concerned with environmental issues, yet how many trees are destroyed to provide the millions of textbooks that are upgraded every year?
One solution might be to simply have extra material available to download on the web that supplements the original text and allows students to recycle the same textbook for several years. With the introduction of the e-Book readers, the use of textbooks might become obsolete with students renting text books, similar to music downloads. One company, Flat World Knowledge is a fledgling operation working to provide on-line text books free of charge and gaining revenue through supplemental materials. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/454991-Flat_World_Knowledge_Reaches_Out_to_College_Bookstores
by Debra Mosso
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